MR imaging of water and fat in cortical bone: comparison between the SWIFT and FSE sequences

Luning Wang 1 and Qun Zhao 1

1
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States

Bone diseases have influenced millions of peoples
lives, and MR imaging of bone is thus important and has
attracted attentions of researchers and clinicians for a
long time. However, bone imaging still remains a
challenge for MRI, as bone, especially cortical bone,
has a relatively short T2 and T2* values, which results
in a fast signal decay. In this work, we aim to conduct
a preliminary study to image free water stored in a
sample of a swine humerus bone by using the fast spin
echo (FSE) sequence and the sweep imaging using Fourier
transformation (SWIFT) sequence. To get a qualitative
mapping of free water distribution in the bone, MR scans
were performed before and after dehydration of the
sample, with fat and water saturation applied. The
results demonstrate that the SWIFT sequence has an
advantage on visualizing cortical bone compared with the
FSE sequence, especially on visualizing bound water
component in cortical bone.

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